the end was just the beginning

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Those were the days … I think

There’s nothing like Facebook telling you it’s your first boyfriend’s 50th birthday to make you feel … Mature.

It’s a startling reminder of how long it’s been since I was a teenager.

I met my boyfriend in high school. My friends trailed after his friends, who were in the year above us and therefore far more alluring than boys our own age.

I’ve stayed mates with a lot of them, which is pretty amazing considering all the water that’s flowed under the bridge since then.

We caught up a few weeks back and the old camaraderie was quickly reignited.

A few marriages have fallen apart, serious health issues have been battled, gaggles of children have grown like weeds.

For me, only little snippets of memories of those six years I spent with my first love remain.

We’d spend every Saturday night at scuzzy The Lucky Country Hotel before convoying down to scuzzy The Gunfighter’s Rest for a dance.

There were make-out sessions in beach car parks and at the local water tower.

I recall an awkward game of spin the bottle.

One day, two boys gave us a lift to school in their bomb of a car. The steering wheel came loose and the driver thought it was hilarious to turn to the passenger, calmly hand the steering wheel to him and announce “It’s your turn to drive!”

Whenever someone’s parents went away, parties would be organised, which usually ended with my hair being held back as I puked copiously into toilets or bathtubs or … on one embarrassing occasion … a beanie.

Aaaaand … That’s about it.

I also don’t have many photographs of those days. My boyfriend was the budding photographer, so he got all the snaps when we parted.

But I had a flick through my sparse albums over the weekend and found a few.

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6 thoughts on “Those were the days … I think”

Those photos look like a Countdown clip from the early eighties! Ah the beach car parks. I remember them. The story about the steering wheel is hilarious but not if you think about our own kids doing it 🙂

I think I look back at my teenage years rather more romantically than they actually were. I suspect that I hated it all at the time and was wishing my life away then too as much as I spend time wistfully thinking about the past and how it was better than life is now. Beach car parks goodness me the things we did.